The Italian web magazine Art a Part of Cult(ure) has just published the interview I had in Rome with artist Benjamin Skepper with the title “Benjamin Skepper, l’olandese tra Australia, Tokio, Russia, resto del mondo e bellezza. L’intervista”. The interview is part of my reportage about artists in Melbourne.
Here the link to the interview
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My interview with artist Ashley Bickerton “Artists are dyed poodles dancing through fiery hoops for the one percent”, is the cover story of the Australian magazine Trouble. (My second cover story on Trouble after Bindi Cole!)
The interview is part of my reportage about contemporary art in Indonesia.
Here the link to the interview
Here the link to the online version of the magazine
The Australian magazine Trouble has just published the interview I had in Melbourne with artist Two One (Hiroyasu Tsuri). The interview is part of my reportage about emerging artists in Melbourne.
Here the link to the interview
Here the link to the online version of the magazine
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The Australian magazine Trouble has just published the interview I had in Perth with artist Tarryn Gill. The interview is part of my reportage about the Perth Art Scene.
Here the link to the interview
Here the link to the online version of the magazine
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The Italian web magazine Art a Part of Cult(ure) just published the interview I had in Melbourne with Edwin Jurriëns, lecturer in Indonesian Studies at Melbourne University. The interview is part of my reportage about contemporary art in Indonesia.
Here you are the link to the interview
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In Melbourne one of the first questions people ask you is “where do you come from?”.
It makes sense in a city where hostels are flooding with drunk people swearing in so many different languages.
There are backpackers coming here with a sheer party mentality, europeans seeking for a well-payed job as waiters and wannabe adventures romantically compelled by soil their hair with red dust, possibly riding through the desert on a rusty jeep (that’s me, and I sadly found out that there is not that much desert in Victoria).
The prosaic reality of Melbourne city clashed so hard with my fantasy – eating Kangaroo on a red rock with aboriginals people – that I decided to keep myself busy with what is supposed to be my main job: contemporary art.
Well, the truth was that I was already in Melbourne to complete the last stages of my reportage about Indonesian contemporary art, so I found myself turning on the recorder and listen to the artist Tintin Wulia.
It was the first interview here in Melbourne and one of the last interviews for my reportage about Indonesia Contemporary Art.
Her work and her experience as an artist epitomized the core of my book: there is no such a thing called Indonesian art, there are some practices born in a geographical segment called Indonesia, and there are some artists born in Indonesia that are making art.
The edges are so sharp just on the map – ideas and aesthetic are much more fluid – yet these borders matter incredibly when comes to bureaucracy, biennales pavilions and personal identity.
I just came back from my 32nd interview for my reportage in Australia, so I finally feel like I can tell my opinion about how to interview an artist.
The first thing you have to do is obviously contact the artist and you usually do that through her/his mail on her/his personal website.
The first mail has to be a quite formal style, without exaggerating though.
You have to be short and clear, explaining the artist why you want to interview her/ him and what aspects of her/his work are you interested in.
If your interview is part of a bigger project, like a reportage, spend a few words to inform the artist about it.
Don’t forget to explain her/him if this is your own project or if you are working for a magazine.
In this last case it would be nice to put a link to the website of your magazine, so the artist can have a look.
Put also your own website or blog in the signature, along with your personal page on a web magazine that hosts your work, if you have one.
That would give you credibility and would also give the artist the possibility to take a peek at your style and at the kind of articles you usually write.
The next mails would probably me more informal. At this point you can get rid of all the links in your signature, the “best” and “regards” and sign with just your given name.
In your second mail you can suggest the artist a place where you can have the interview.
The most common places are the artist’s studio, a nice and quite café, the space where the artist has currently a show or the gallery that represents him.
Give options to the artist. To meet her/him in his studio would be ideal – you can guess much more from the artist’s natural habitat than from outcomes of a simple conversation.
Of course, you can suggest to meet in the studio, but not all the artists have one and not everyone is happy to let a suspicious journalist or art critic in. If the artist tells you that his studio is empty or messy at moment, just don’t bother. Above all don’t insist.
If you are doing the interview in your own city, you probably would know the most quiet and suitable cafe for an interview. If you are abroad don’t be shy, just ask the artist if he knows a nice cafe to meet.
The choice would probably tell you something about the artist lifestyle and tastes.
In any case discover new places in a new city is always exciting.
Extreme case: let’s say you are an art journalist doing a reportage in a remote third world country.
You do all the research, you use all the common sense and you even follow some “how to” on the internet.
Even then, you could find yourself in a difficult situation like: I fixed one month in advance an interview with artist Pinco tomorrow. But I just meet artist Pallino and I can interview him only tomorrow, because he leaves the day after tomorrow. A rapid check to your mailbox and… crap! The artist Pollaiolo wants to anticipate his interview…apparently he is free only tomorrow!
So, let’s make the point. We have three interviews to prepare in one single day.
And you wake up late today too!
Don’t cancel an interview. Don’t even think about it.
To cancel an interview is bad. It’s always bad.
I did that just two times and each time a dire calamity had struck me.
The first time my boyfriend threw me out of our house, the second time a crater suddenly opened in the ground devouring my beloved kitten.
So don’t do that. Seriously.
What you can do is forget about the tan today, ignore the heat and the shining sun and sit in front of your computer.
Now all your efforts will be concentrated on doing an accurate research and at the same time get all the work done as fast as possible.
I usually use the following method.
Angki Purbandono in one of the artists from Indonesia that take the photography further and stimulate the discussion around it.
He was one of the founder of MES56 and a very appreciate international artist.
Before meeting him I thought his photography was all about aestetic
values. I found out that is not completely true.
Actually, to make people look at something from everyday life in a
different way is already a conceptual act.
Defamiliarisation of common objects, weird associations of items,
giantisation of small findings. Through Angki’s swiftian attitude one can
discover that the Beauty and the Strange are not so far from what we
experience in our daily life.
I’ve seen Angki’s scanner. It’s a normal scanner, not pretentious at all.
I asked Angki when and why he started using a scanner instead of a
camera:
“Quello che noto nelle mie opere è che tu le vedi e dici Uh che carine… ma poi le guardi con più attenzione è AAARRGH! Sono micidiali! Per me questa apparenza innocua è come una specie di presa in giro… e anche io in fondo sono così, più aggressiva di quello che sembro a prima vista!” mi dice Anita Calà in un impeto di passione di cui solo le rosse sono capaci.
Quattro del pomeriggio, siamo sedute, io, lei e mio cappello (un Borsalino vintage grigio molto ghetto-chic, devo dire) al bar Ombre Rosse in Piazza Sant’Egidio, proprio di fronte al Museo di Roma in Trastevere.
Avevo incontrato l’artista qualche settimana fa alla Galleria Nube di Oort dove è esposta la sua videoistallazione “Anita C” nell’ambito di una collettiva, insomma, un buon pretesto per approfondire il suo lavoro.
La storia di Anita Calà come artista visiva sembrerebbe partire da quando, dalla mattina alla sera, decise di mollare il suo lavoro di costumista ad altissimi livelli per cinema, teatro e televisione, per buttarsi nell’unico ambito dove l’unica certezza è l’incertezza: l’arte contemporanea.
In realtà è cominciata molto prima: “Mi ricordo questa scena delle pagine gialle: ero piccolissima, le scarabocchiavo e nella mia mente ogni pagina era una persona con un suo vestito particolare”
Naima Morelli is an arts writer and journalist specialized in contemporary art from Asia-Pacific and the MENA region.
She has written for the Financial Times, Al-Jazeera, The Art Newspaper, ArtAsiaPacific, Internazionale and Il Manifesto, among others, and she is a regular contributor to Plural Art Mag, Middle East Monitor and Middle East Eye as well as writing curatorial texts for galleries.
She is the author of three books on Southeast Asian contemporary art.
Reach out: contact [at] naimamorelli.com
